This path began when some of the black students in 1967 formed the Black Students Alliance at Yale (BSAY). BSAY’s founders felt—perhaps understandably—that Yale was an unfriendly place for them. They found camaraderie in gathering together, but they also tapped into a tradition in the larger black community. That was the tradition of black groups that embraced and celebrated their own insularity. Such groups found in racial separateness an appealing answer to the pervasive racism in mainstream society. These self-segregating factions often insisted that white America could never be redeemed from its racist attitudes and practices. Reformation was, in this view, an illusory goal. The better answer to a racist society was black autonomy.
From its beginning, BSAY indulged in rhetorical forays into this anti-integrationist tradition. Its founders insisted that for Yale to make serious progress in attracting and retaining black students, the university would have to make more room for exclusively black programs and activities.
Yale conceded—not in the spirit that it was giving up on its integrationist ideal, but because it was persuaded that black exclusivity would be a temporary step. At some point, this ladder would be kicked away, and Yale would at that point be fully and tranquilly integrated.
That never happened. Rather, BSAY and Yale became locked in a pattern of escalating demands met with increasing concessions. We have traced these through the creation of the African American Studies Program, the Black Panthers debacle, the creation of racially separate orientation programs, separate ethnic counselors, the “House” system of Cultural Centers, and the vigorous programming of the Cultural Centers. BSAY and the African American Cultural Center promoted not only racial separatism but also anti-Semitism and a general attitude of resentment towards other minorities and whites.
By 2015, when Professor Christakis was mobbed by a group of some 100 students, most of whom were black, accusing him of racism, Yale had become a place where the old ideal of racial integration was derided as itself a form of white racial oppression. This had been a long time coming. In 2005, Woody Brittain, Yale class of 1970 and one of the founders of BSAY, said in the Yale Alumni Magazine:
"We want to counteract the natural tendency toward too much balkanization. People like to retreat to their comfort zone—but one of the great values of a place like Yale is to get people outside their comfort zones, forming friendships and working together. The Afro-American Cultural Center should be a leader in this effort. African Americans are the group that is most often accused of self-segregation. It is very powerful for this group to take the lead in reaching out. And more than that, the House has always been a place where issues of diversity are freely raised and freely discussed. We have the experience of what it means to be diverse."
Brittain went on to extol the “the debates of several decades ago between William F. Buckley, Jr. and William Sloane Coffin” as part of the Yale he would like to see restored. “We want to bring some of that magic back.”
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Brittain, as a one-time organizer and promoter of the racially separatist BSAY, reimagines the group’s history and wishes for something better than what actually came of it. His good intentions are unmistakable but his expressions are temporizing. What is “too much” balkanization? Is there a level of balkanization that is just right? Since when did BSAY stand for getting people of diverse backgrounds to form friendships and work together? Some African Americans do practice “self-segregation,” but the Yale community is hardly a place where that is an “accusation.” More often it is extolled as a matter of pride.
But Brittain’s statement, even if hedged, was a welcome call for BSAY and Yale to rise above ethnic division. It went unheeded.
Yale today is more segregated than at any point in the last half century. Just as the university’s leaders saw in the early 1960s, racial segregation is a blight on a Yale education and a detriment to America. Yale’s efforts to escape that situation have, in far too many cases, only made it worse.